Aug. 28
TEXAS:
Racial bias found in Texas death penalty cases, Harvard Law School study says
---- Harris County was named 1 of 16 'outlier' counties in the US, where 5 or
more death sentences were assessed between 2010 and 2015
A Harvard Law School study has found that racial bias, overly aggressive
prosecutions and inadequate representation for poor defendants affect death
penalty cases in Harris County, Texas. Juries in the county, which includes
Houston, have imposed the death penalty more than any other county in the US
since its reinstatement in 1976.
The Fair Punishment Project also notes that the number of death sentences
handed down in Harris County has fallen to 10 since 2010, from 53 between 1998
and 2003.
Harris County was named 1 of 16 "outlier" counties in the US, where 5 or more
death sentences were assessed in between 2010 and 2015. In the 8 counties
examined by the study, 41% of the death sentences were given to black
defendants and 69% to minorities overall. In Harris County, all defendants
condemned since 2004 were from racial minority groups.
"When you look at what the death penalty actually looks like on the ground in
Harris County, you see things that should disturb you," Rob Smith, one of the
researchers on the project, told the Houston Chronicle.
"There's a pattern of overzealous prosecution that dates back for decades but
is still present in the time period for the study, and is matched by
under-zealous [defense] representation in cases."
Harris County district attorney Devon Anderson said her office was judicious in
its use of the death penalty.
"When we seek death, it's because we have a solid guilt/innocence case and a
very strong punishment case," she said. "The death penalty is only appropriate
for the worst of the worst."
Anderson said she did not know the race of a defendant or victim whenever she
and 4 top staff members met to discuss whether to seek the death penalty.
"I think it's very important that it be 'blind' in that regard," she said.
Juries across the country are proving to be increasingly reluctant to sentence
defendants to death, the Harvard report said, choosing instead the option of
life imprisonment without parole.
The last Harris County trial in which prosecutors sought the death penalty
ended in November: 28-year-old Johnathan Sanchez was given life without parole.
The last Harris County jury to assess a death sentence did so in 2014, when
Harlem Lewis was sent to death row for the killings of Bellaire police officer
Jimmie Norman and "good samaritan" Terry Taylor.
The Harris County district attorney's office is currently seeking the death
penalty in 2 cases. Ronald Haskell, who is white, is accused of killing 2
adults and 4 children from his ex-wife's family in spring 2014. David Ray
Conley, who is black, is accused of killing his ex-girlfriend, her husband and
6 children, including his son, last year.
(source: The Guardian)
*****************
Study: Harris County death penalty cases plagued by bias
A Harvard Law School study reports that racial bias, over-aggressive
prosecutions and poor representation for indigent defendants plagues the
handling of death-penalty cases in the Southeast Texas county where Houston is
situated.
The report by the school's Fair Punishment Project names Harris County as one
of 16 "outlier" U.S. counties where 5 or more death sentences were assessed in
2010-15.
Harris County juries have imposed death penalties on more defendants than in
any other county since the 1976 reinstatement of the death penalty. The number
of death sentences has fallen from 53 in 1998 through 2003 to 10 since 2010.
However, all condemned since 2004 are from minorities.
Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson told the Houston Chronicle
(http://bit.ly/2brIHX6) her office is judicious in its use of the death
penalty.
(source: Associated Press)
PENNSYLVANIA:
Death Penalty Sought in Cookout Ambush That Killed 5, Unborn Child
Prosecutors in Pennsylvania say they plan to seek the death penalty against 2
men charged in an ambush at a cookout that killed 5 adults and an unborn child.
The Allegheny County district attorneys' office filed notice Friday that it
would seek capital punishment if Cheron Shelton, 29, and Robert Thomas, 27, are
convicted of 1st-degree murder.
Prosecutors said the death penalty would be warranted because of the
defendants' previous convictions, the multiple felonies alleged and the grave
risk posed to others.
Defense attorneys say the men are innocent. Shelton's lawyer, Randall McKinney,
called the decision to seek capital punishment "disheartening," but said it
didn't shake his belief that his client's name will be cleared at trial.
The men are each charged with 6 counts of criminal homicide in the March 9
cookout in Wilkinsburg, a suburb of Pittsburgh. Prosecutors suspect a man
wounded at the cookout had killed Shelton's best friend in 2013, and they are
looking for that man.
Prosecutors allege Thomas fired 18 shots from a .40-caliber pistol into a group
of about 15 partygoers, prompting them to run toward a rear porch where
authorities say Shelton was hiding behind a fence. Prosecutors allege Shelton
peppered the fleeing crowd from 5-feet away with 30 shots from a rifle similar
to an AK-47.
Brittany Powell, 27, who was renting the home, was killed as were her siblings
Chanetta Powell, 25, and Jerry Shelton, 35. The county medical examiner ruled
Chanetta Powell's unborn son died because of her death. The siblings' cousin,
Tina Shelton, 37, and their friend, Shada Mahone, 26, also died in the attack.
The 2 men also face charges of criminal conspiracy, aggravated assault and
reckless endangerment. Authorities say bullets pierced the walls of the
residence, wounding 3 other people. 3 children were in the house at the time
but unharmed.
(source: Associated Press)
GEORGIA:
30 years later, attorneys still argue over Stocking Stranglings -- Journalist
and author Billy Winn, the former editorial page editor at The Ledger-Enquirer,
shares his thoughts on Carlton Gary and the "Stocking Stanglings."
30 years after a jury convicted and sentenced Carlton Gary to death in 3 of
Columbus' 7 heinous "Stocking Stranglings" of 1977-78, attorneys still argue
over evidence in the case.
The latest piece in contention is a sketch artist's rendering from a rape
survivor who was under hypnosis as she described the man who attacked her.
Today, as Gary seeks a new trial or sentencing in the gruesome rapes and
stranglings that terrorized the city from September 1977 to April 1978, that
sketch is swept up in an intense battle over which elements of a massive case
file should be subject to further review.
As so often has happened before in the saga of a career criminal who grew up in
Columbus before prowling other places to steal, rob, rape and kill, just when
the end appears near, the tale takes another turn.
Late last year the defense and prosecution filed what they thought would be
their final arguments on Gary's motion for a new trial: The prosecution filed
Nov. 6; the defense Dec. 11. All that was left was to wait for Superior Court
Judge Frank Jordan Jr. to issue a ruling.
Then the briefcase turned up.
The briefcase belonged to Don Miller, a sheriff's investigator who died in
1983, a year before authorities finally tracked Gary down. Miller's son-in-law,
Doug Grubbs, found it in the attic, saw Stocking Strangler files in it, and
turned it over to the sheriff's office Jan. 11. Attorneys inspected it Feb. 3.
What ensued was a heated exchange over whether Gary's defense had ever seen the
files. By August, both sides agreed that it had - 20 years ago, during Gary's
early appeals in the 1990s.
Gary's lead defense lawyer, Atlanta attorney John Martin, finally decided just
1 document from the briefcase should be added to the evidence Jordan is to
consider: the sketch.
Prelude to terror
On Sept. 11, 1977, a friend coming to take 64-year-old Gertrude Miller to
church found the home daycare owner had been brutally beaten with a board and
raped in her 2703 Hood St. home. The assailant, who climbed in through her
bedroom window, had left behind 3 stockings he took from her dresser and
knotted.
Authorities later decided Miller was the 1st victim of the "Stocking
Strangler," so called because he so often used stockings to strangle women to
death. The ritual serial killer also left his victims' bodies covered.
He proved to be an ingenious burglar, who patiently took doors off their hinges
and once disassembled a deadbolt lock improperly installed. In one break-in he
removed burglar bars from a window and set them aside.
In the wake of Miller's assault, police soon saw the horrors to come as 4 women
ages 59 through 89 brutally were beaten, raped and strangled from Sept. 16
through Oct. 25, 1977, with more to follow.
Desperately seeking a suspect, detectives on Oct. 29, 1977, brought a hypnotist
to see Gertrude Miller, who under his spell described the intruder she saw when
he turned on a bedroom lamp.
Detectives took the sketch, dated Oct. 31, 1977, and filed it away. Though
Gary's defense attorney questioned Miller about it at the 1986 trial, when she
identified Gary as her assailant, the sketch was never shown to the jury. It
faded into the voluminous data that now constitutes the Stocking Strangler case
file - until the briefcase turned up.
Now Martin wants it in evidence for Gary's new trial motion. "This suspect
looks nothing like the defendant," he wrote Aug. 9. He has asked Jordan to hold
a hearing on it.
"Everything's on hold until the judge rules on this composite," Martin said
last week.
Should Jordan hold a hearing on the sketch, it further may delay an aging
criminal case so often extended before.
District Attorney Julia Slater argued that the depiction is irrelevant. Miller
herself said it didn't look like the man who raped her, and even if the sketch
wasn't displayed during Gary's trial, the defense knew it existed and
questioned her about it on cross-examination.
Besides that, Gary wasn't convicted of assaulting Miller, Slater noted. Like
other attacks on older women in which Gary was implicated but not charged -
including 4 of the 7 stranglings - the Miller case was used at his trial as a
"similar transaction," evidence of Gary's pattern of criminal conduct.
Martin has countered that because then-District Attorney Bill Smith maintained
in 1986 that Gary alone committed all of the assaults and stranglings, any
evidence clearing him in one case casts doubt on the others.
Casting doubt on Gary's guilt has become a crusade for his supporters and
others opposed to the death penalty.
Last chance
Today Gary is 65 years old, no longer the sleek, fashionable defendant who went
on trial back in the 20th century. He remains on death row in the Georgia
Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson, waiting to see if Martin's
last-ditch effort can gain him another chance.
"My sense is that this is Carlton's last chance," said British writer David
Rose, author of the 2007 book "The Big Eddy Club," which championed Gary as the
victim of a racist judicial system that withheld exculpatory evidence to ensure
his conviction.
Rose signed on as an investigator for Gary's defense team to research the book
and today maintains contact with those involved.
"My views on the case have never changed," he said during a recent telephone
interview.
Asked about Gary's well-being, Rose said: "He's not doing too good physically,
and not very happy." An attempted escape at the prison about 10 years ago
prompted administrators to clamp down on the time inmates get outside their
cells, he said.
Rose said Martin's December motion is Gary's best shot at escaping lethal
injection, a fate he already dodged once before.
"It's one of the strongest legal motions I've ever seen," the author said.
And the sketch would only bolster it, said Martin: "I thought we had a
compelling case already. This was just gravy."
Dodging the needle
The last time Gary narrowly escaped death was Dec. 16, 2009, when the Georgia
Supreme Court issued a last-minute stay of his execution, sending the case back
to Muscogee Superior Court to consider DNA-testing suitable evidence.
After reviewing the evidence, prosecutors and defense attorneys on Feb. 19,
2010, agreed to test 4 items from 3 of the 7 stranglings for DNA. The hope was
that this would settle Gary's guilt or innocence once and for all.
Instead it caused more confusion:
On Dec. 14, 2010, attorneys said the initial DNA test results matched Gary to
the Sept. 24, 1977, rape and strangling of Jean Dimenstein, but not the Oct.
25, 1977, murder of Martha Thurmond. The defense then sought testing on clothes
police collected from Gertrude Miller the morning after she was raped and
beaten.
On March 6, 2012, attorneys said tests of the Miller evidence yielded a DNA
profile that did not match Gary.
On Nov. 21, 2013, Slater announced the Thurmond DNA test was tainted at the
state crime lab and thus invalid. The flawed test used up the crime scene
sample police had collected.
The defense was aghast: The Thurmond evidence had been the most promising, more
likely than any of the rest to yield a clean DNA profile.
The error had a secondary effect: If the GBI fouled the Thurmond evidence, who
could say the Dimenstein test was accurate? Perhaps it also was tainted.
The forensic evidence has become a muddle that fogs the pattern of Gary's life
of crime, much of which Smith laid out during the 1986 trial.
30 years ago, the evidence against Gary was not as much forensic as
circumstantial: matters of place and time that if coincidental, were remarkably
so:
Wherever Gary went, older women were raped and strangled.
The timeline
Born Sept. 24, 1950, in Columbus, Gary at age 16 moved with his mother to Fort
Myers and later Gainesville, Fla., before heading to New York, where the trail
of assaults attributed to him began:
-- On April 14, 1970, Nellie Farmer, 85, was found raped and strangled and her
body left covered in her home in the Wellington Hotel in Albany, N.Y. Police
found Gary's fingerprint at the scene. Gary claimed another man killed Farmer
and was convicted only of robbery. He was released from prison March 31, 1975,
and moved to Syracuse, NY.
-- On June 27, 1975, Marion Fisher, 40, was found raped and strangled on a
road just outside Syracuse. Investigators in 2007 said they matched Gary's DNA
to the cold-case evidence. Unknown to local authorities at the time of Gary's
1986 trial, this is not in evidence here.
-- On Jan. 2, 1977, Jean Frost, 55, was raped and nearly choked to death in
her home in Syracuse. Gary had a watch taken from Frost's home when police
arrested him 2 days later. Again he blamed another man for the assault. He was
charged with perjury, assault and possessing stolen property. He escaped from
prison Aug. 23, 1977, and came home to Columbus to live at 1027 Fisk Ave.
-- On Sept. 11, 1977, Gertrude Miller was raped and beaten. Gary lived about 2
blocks away.
-- On Sept. 16, 1977, Mary Willis "Fern" Jackson, 59, of 2505 17th St., was
found brutally beaten, raped and strangled with a stocking and sash. Her body
was left covered. Her stolen car was later found on Benner Avenue near Fisk
Avenue.
-- On Sept. 24, 1977, Jean Dimenstein, 71, was found raped and strangled with
a stocking in her home that then had the address 3027 21st St. (the street has
since been renamed). Her body was left covered with sheets and a pillow.
-- On Oct. 21, 1977, Florence Scheible, 89, was found raped and strangled with
a stocking in her 1941 Dimon St. home, which today has a different address. Her
body was left covered. Gary's right thumbprint was found on a door frame
leading into Scheible's bedroom.
-- On Oct. 25, 1977, Martha Thurmond, 70, was found raped and strangled with a
stocking in her 2614 Marion St. home. Her body was covered by a pillow,
blankets and sheets. Gary's fingerprint was found on the frame of a rear
bedroom window.
-- On Dec. 28, 1977, Kathleen Woodruff, 74, was found raped and strangled in
her 1811 Buena Vista Road home, which later was demolished during an Aflac
expansion. Gary's fingerprint was found on the aluminum window screen where the
intruder entered, and his palm print on the windowsill inside.
-- On Feb. 11, 1978, Ruth Schwob, 74, of 1800 Carter Ave., was nearly
strangled to death by an intruder she fought off, pressing a panic alarm by her
bed. Police found her sitting on the edge of her bed, gasping, a stocking
wrapped around her neck.
-- On Feb. 12, 1978, Mildred Borom, 78, 1612 Forest Ave., about 2 blocks from
Schwob's home, was found raped and strangled with a cord cut from window
blinds. Her body was covered with a dress.
-- On April 20, 1978, Janet Cofer, 61, of 3783 Steam Mill Road, was found
raped and strangled with a stocking. A pillow covered her face.
After that, the stranglings abruptly ended. Police said Gary switched to
robbing restaurants and moved to Greenville, S.C., where that fall he earned
the nickname "Steakhouse Bandit." He went to jail for armed robbery Feb. 22,
1979.
He escaped March 15, 1984, and returned to Georgia, where authorities arrested
him in Albany the following May 3.
On Aug. 26, 1986, a jury found him guilty of killing Scheible, Thurmond and
Woodruff. The next day jurors sentenced him to death.
What happens next?
Investigators collected some evidence that doesn't fit Gary, his defense team
argues. A shoeprint at the Farmer crime scene was too small for Gary's size 13
1/2 feet. So was a shoeprint on the air-conditioning unit the intruder stood
upon to climb into Schwob's window.
Blood evidence prosecutors used to tie Gary to the murders actually excluded
him as the strangler, his attorneys said. And though police claimed to have
found his fingerprints, they did not photograph those prints to pinpoint their
location, and they had no objective standard for establishing a match.
A mold made from a bite mark found on Cofer's breast doesn't match Gary's
teeth, the defense said. Though Gary had dental work in prison, the work was on
his upper teeth, not his lower. The mold shows the killer had a lower, rotated
tooth Gary doesn't have.
The bite-mark mold wasn't shown to the jury during Gary's trial. It turned up
in 2005, bolstering defense claims that prosecutors withheld crucial evidence
back in 1986.
District Attorney Julia Slater declined to be interviewed for this story, but
she offered a written statement:
"The state remains confident in the validity of the convictions and sentences
returned by the jury against Carlton Gary in 1986. Post-conviction DNA results
have established that Carlton Gary's DNA was found in the vaginal washing of
Jean Dimenstein and no new evidence has been discovered that would raise any
doubt about the jury's decision. The case has been back with the Superior Court
of Muscogee County for 6 1/2 years and the extraordinary motion for new trial
has been pending for four years. The state will continue to work tirelessly to
ensure that the jury's verdict is upheld and the sentence carried out."
Asked whether he ever expected Gary's appeals to go on this long, his defense
attorney said: "I always thought this case would go on forever."
Regardless of Jordan's ruling on the new trial motion, it will be appealed to
the Georgia Supreme Court. The end is not in sight.
Billy Winn, a former Ledger-Enquirer editorial-page editor who covered Gary's
trial and spent 10 years researching the case, is among those who believe Gary
is guilty.
"He probably killed more often than we know," Winn said last week. But he's not
surprised Gary has persuaded others he's innocent. "Nothing in this case
surprises me anymore," he said.
"What he was, was a polished con man," Winn said. "He could confound anybody.
If he hadn't been a killer, he could have been the greatest salesman on earth."
Though Winn found David Rose's book outrageous and infuriating, the 2 writers
have something in common: Neither believes in the death penalty.
What should happen?
Said Winn: "I would just like to see Carlton go away, by however that may be."
(source: Ledger-Enquirer)
MISSISSIPPI:
Man charged with capital murder in Miss. nun slayings
A Kosciusko, Miss. man has been charged with 2 counts of capital murder in the
deaths of 2 nuns in Holmes County.
Authorities said late Friday night that Rodney Earl Sanders, 46, was developed
as a suspect after "an exhaustive interview Friday evening."
Sanders is charged in the deaths of Sister Paula Merrill, a nurse practitioner
with the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth in Kentucky, and Sister Margaret Held,
a nurse practitioner with the School Sisters of St. Francis in Milwaukee. They
were found dead Thursday in their home on Castalian Springs Road in Durant, a
town of roughly 2,600.
The two women were stabbed, coroner Dexter Howard said, but a cause of death
won't be determined until the autopsies are complete.
Howard called the crime scene "one of the worst" he's ever seen.
During the course of the interview, agents with the Mississippi Bureau of
Investigation obtained enough information to charge Sanders.
MBI Director Lt. Col. Jimmy Jordan said Sanders was a person of interest early
in the investigation. Authorities have not released information on how he was
implicated or what his connection to Merrill and Held might have been.
"With the cooperation of the Durant and Kosciusko police departments, Holmes
County Sheriff's Department and the (state) Attorney General Office this
heinous crime has been resolved," read a statement from Jordan.
Sanders is being held in an undisclosed detention center awaiting his initial
court appearance.
MBI Spokesman Warren Strain said further details won't be released yet because
there is still evidence being processed by the crime lab.
"Right now there's really still a long way to go," Strain said. "We're holding
off on saying anything else tonight. We just wanted everyone to know that he's
off the street."
(source: Clarion-Ledger)
*************************
Executions warranted for some crimes
I've lost count along the way of the number of executions I have witnessed over
the years here in Mississippi.
I think the number is 8 to 10 executions, where I actually stood inside a small
room looking through a large window as a death row inmate was put to death. I
covered other executions at Parchman where I didn't witness the execution, but
was there writing about them.
I remember going to the state Penitentiary at Parchman in 1983 for the
execution of Jimmy Lee Gray, who was put to death in the gas chamber. I didn't
actual witness Gray's execution, but I was part of the team that went up there
to cover the execution.
Gray was the 1st Mississippi death row inmate executed in 19 years when he was
put to death for the rape and murder of a 3-year-old Pascagoula girl. In those
days, executions were carried out after midnight.
After Gray's execution, Mississippi conducted 3 other gas chamber executions in
the 1980s.
There were no executions in the 1990s. The next execution was in 2002 when
Tracy Alan Hansen became the 1st inmate to die by lethal injection in
Mississippi. They became a lot more regular starting with Hansen's execution.
However, there hasn't been an execution in the state in several years now. I
thought about my experiences with executions last week when Dean Parker and his
brother Scott Parker came to the state Capitol to register their displeasure
with the possibility of 1 of the 2 men sentenced to death for the 1990 killing
of their father Carl Parker, his wife, Bobbie Jo, the couple's 12-year-old son
and 9-year-old daughter.
The Quitman County family was killed in their home after returning from church
to find 2 men burglarizing their home.
The girl was raped. Her father's finger was chopped off to steal his wedding
ring. After shooting the victims, the killers set the house on fire, leaving
the bodies to burn.
Now, 26 years later, the 2 men sentenced to death for the gruesome crime -
Anthony Carr and Robert Simon Jr. - are still alive and 1 could possibly get
off death row. .
Earlier this month, the Mississippi Supreme Court reversed a lower court's
decision that Carr is not mentally disabled and can be executed. The state high
court sent the case back to the lower court.
An attorney for Carr in May had appealed to the state high court based on 2002
U.S. Supreme Court Ruling that states cannot execute mentally disabled people.
During Carr's appeal in 2013, 2 psychologists disagreed about whether Carr was
competent, and a Quitman County circuit judge said it was "too close to call"
and upheld his execution.
Tears streamed down the face of Scott Parker at the state Capitol when he
talked about how it made him feel that Carr could possibly get off death row.
I could feel Scott Parker's pain. Once in my life, I was firmly opposed to the
death penalty, but over the years, I have modified my views or my views have
been modified because of the nature of some crimes. I now believe the death
penalty is appropriate in some cases.
What is hard to take in the Quitman County case is that 26 years after the
horrific crime, the family members of the victims don't have the justice they
seek.
(source: Jimmie E. Gates, Clarion-Ledger)
TENNESSEE:
The conservative case against the death penalty
Though support for the death penalty is at a 40-year low, a slim majority still
supports the practice. However, a growing number of conservatives are
recognizing that the death penalty is a government program that doesn't work
and contradicts the pillars of the Republican Party: limited government, fiscal
responsibility, and pro-life policies. These same guiding principles are moving
conservatives to support alternatives.
I recognize the emotional appeal of the death penalty: Evil demands a strong
response, and murder should be followed with swift and sure justice.
Unfortunately, the death penalty system is never swift in executing death
warrants, but is always costly and occasionally misguided. For these reasons,
conservative legislators around the country are seeking to replace the death
penalty with life without parole. For a number of these lawmakers, their
growing opposition to the death penalty is not based on moral qualms with
executions but is rooted in their belief that the death penalty system is a
bloated, broken government program that does not make citizens safer or provide
legal finality to victims.
If, as conservatives, we believe the government is often inept in running
programs, how can we have confidence that this same government can rightly
decide who lives and who dies?
Recognizing the error-prone nature of government has led many leaders to seek
tough on crime sentences that do not have the same irreversible consequences.
With a conservative majority, Nebraska repealed its death penalty last year.
Utah came just a few votes short of repealing the death penalty this year. And
Montana's House of Representatives also carried a bipartisan bill to repeal the
death penalty that came 1 vote short in 2015. In 2016, 6 states considered
repeal bills sponsored by Republicans.
Tennessee conservatives also recognize the problems, particularly the risk of
executing the innocent. During the 2016 legislative session, East Tennessean
Ray Krone testified in front of the House Criminal Justice and Senate Judiciary
committees about this risk. Krone spent 10 years in prison (3 on death row) in
Arizona before DNA evidence exonerated him and identified the real perpetrator.
Krone reminded committee members that no matter how many safeguards are
created, we can never ensure that our state will not execute an innocent
person, especially since DNA evidence is only available in roughly 10 % of
homicide cases.
Still, while innocence is a concern, we know horrible crimes happen, and
victims and their family members should receive justice. But tough-on-crime
policies should also be smart on crime - policies that make us safer, provide
legal finality and save taxpayer dollars. Not one of these goals is
accomplished by the death penalty system.
State cost studies, including North Carolina and Maryland, show the cost per
execution to be at least $2 million more than life without parole. Similarly, a
2004 Tennessee report concluded that capital murder trials alone cost 48 % more
than trials that seek life without parole. With this high cost, we still fail
to see outcomes, with only 6 executions in Tennessee since 1960.
At its peak, the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville held 150
death row inmates; today, there are only 57. A number of death row inmates have
had their sentences overturned, and at least four were wrongfully convicted and
released. The leading cause of death on Tennessee's death row is not
pentobarbital or the electric chair, but natural causes, with the average of 28
years spent on death row before execution, if the execution ever occurs.
The death penalty system creates a dilemma - how to bring swift and sure
justice to victims' families while also ensuring an innocent person is not
executed, and to do so in a cost-effective way. With such a flawed system,
striking this balance is not possible, and based on our principles, Tennessee
conservatives should call for our state to move away from the death penalty.
(source: Opinion; Amy Lawrence, a Tennessee conservative who has worked on
numerous Republican campaigns, is the coordinator for Tennessee Conservatives
Concerned About the Death Penalty (www.tnconservativesconcerned.org)
----Knoxville News Sentinel)
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